


Seafoam and Hibiscus

by Lumakiri



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Genre: F/M, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22632676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumakiri/pseuds/Lumakiri
Summary: But verily, it be the nature of dreams to end.Set to If I'd Found the Right Words to Say by Snow Patrol
Relationships: Link/Marin (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Seafoam and Hibiscus

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [If I'd Found the Right Words to Say](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/557707) by Snow Patrol. 



_ Right about now, if I’d found the right words to say, _ _   
_ _ I’d tell you you're safe and take hold of your hand. _

They stood together, on the bluff. The spray would whip around their faces and fill their lungs and if he really tried, he could still see the ocean in her eyes that day. Gods, he could almost taste her on his tongue, that scent of wind and sea and flower. Her joyous laughter echoed around him, the ghosts of her smile catching on his. Nothing in the world, in all the lands he’d seen, in all the wonder he’d known, would ever be as perfect as that day.

_ I'll be there by your side for the rest of your life, _

And like the fool he was, he’d promised her himself. Not just her, he’d convinced himself he’d remain forever by her side, as if he knew no better. Oh, but she had known. She laughed and shook her head and smiled that beautiful, knowing smile that made his heart ache. She had told him herself he’d one day leave the island. But there, on that bluff, he had been so sure he’d never be anywhere in the world except here, beside her.

_ Our bodies could fall off the end of the world. _

He believed it so hard he had blinded himself.

_ Something told me we'd be happy forever,  
_ _ I don't see how this could change any of that. _

And he had continued to convince himself of that, so that he was blinded when the end came. He had never truly even said goodbye, so confident was he of his own convictions. Until the moment he saw her melt away on the breeze, he had deafened his own screams with the false comfort he’d be there with her no matter what happened. The scriptures, the shrines, the warnings of the Owl, he’d ignored it all in blind belief that they were exempt from the darkness of the island.

_ I will follow your ghost as it climbs up the rock-face  
_ _ And lie with you on the grass above. _

In his dreams, the Island, as promised, lived on. But it was empty. Each and every time he woke up on that beach, he’d walk to that bluff, and stand there alone. He’d scream to the sea, to the sands, to the gulls above. He’d fall to his knees and beg the lone, jagged stones in the sea to give him back that day. For the spray to leap up the cliff the same, for her cheeks to crease the same way as she smiled, for the petals in her hair to drift down to the foam as before. 

_ And I'd like to change all this. _

But each and every dreaming was the same.

_ And I'd like to wake up from this _

And each and every waking, ever more so.

_ By your side _

At first, when he’d washed back up on the shores of Hyrule, he’d tried to again tell himself lies. That what he did was right, that he had freed them all from the tyranny of nightmares. That she was at peace.

_ How did we ever survive for this length of time?  
_ _ Living with only a care for one thing. _

Link wasn’t able to lie to himself anymore.

_ But the light that shines from her  
_ _ Whenever she's happy is worth every minute. _

She should have been able to sing. To sing, and fly, and live. He had taken that. He had taken her for his own selfish ends. He had caught her like a butterfly in a net, and forgotten to free her before he smashed that bell jar into a thousand pieces. He’d basked in her sunshine and then brought her night. He should’ve known better. Should’ve known better that something as kind and pure and gentle could never be real in his bitter, sordid world.

_ That we've saved ourselves. _

But at least Link had survived, yes? At least Hyrule had kept its precious golden hero. Oh, at least he’d liberated the lands of another evil, before he turned it into dust. He didn’t even think anymore that the Nightmare was really wrong at all. It was just like him, a creature in the cold, clinging onto the warmth of Koholint.

_ Maybe there's hope in just one final second. _

They were all just moths in the dark, looking for that beacon in the endless dark sea. He thought back to the moment the shadow of the Wind Fish above swallowed him in its shade and he saw the Island shimmer away into nothing. The gulls had cried above. In that last, torrid moment, a gull had cried so loudly and mournfully above that Link had wept.

_ A flash of her love as she waves us goodbye. _

In every dream he’d had since of that Island, in every encore of that horrific moment, Link had seen that gull. It would soar low, and drop a single red flower into his lap. Endless petals would fall from his hands into the swirling turquoise fathoms of the ocean. He would awake with a jolt to his own salted tears filling his throat. And he would sob until the sun rose when he’d invariably find a lonely bloom caught in the folds of his clothes.

_ Don't torture yourself with what we might have given. _

He could only dare imagine it was her way of telling him to forgive himself.

_ We did everything that we could ever do. _

Link tried to, he tried to for her sake. As if it might just bring him to the bluff.

_ And I'd like to change all this. _

Where the sun would catch on the ocean.

_ And I'd like to wake up from this. _

And they’d laugh forever in shades of seafoam and hibiscus.

_ By your side _


End file.
